By Raïssa Robles
The torture happened over 30 years ago but to this day, the victim still insisted on talking to me on condition that I won’t reveal his name.
Na-torture ka pala (you were tortured), I told the person whom I have known for the last 17 years. And yet he never mentioned he had been tortured even when the topic came up.
I had stumbled on his name while looking at old Martial Law documents.
You’d be surprised if I told you who he is but I really can’t reveal his name. You see, he told me, he doesn’t think the military has changed its ways. Despite all its pronouncements about treating dissidents differently, they still retain that old familiar feeling of hatred toward those they have branded “leftists”.
He said:
I’m somewhat paranoid. I don’t trust the military. If they crack down they will start with whom they know.
I will let my friend, whom I’ll call Fred, tell his story:
“On the first day, I was stripped down to my underwear. I was 120 pounds.”
His torturers were military officers Rodolfo Aguinaldo and Billy Bibit (now both dead).
“Aguinaldo’s arm was as big as my thigh. He rolled up a magazine. A body building magazine. He hit my balls with it repeatedly.”
“What’s your course,” Aguinaldo asked Fred.
“Zoology,” Fred replied.
“You know what will happen if I continue doing this,” Aguinaldo told Fred as he steadily slapped Fred’s balls with the rolled-up magazine.
Aquinaldo did not like it that Fred did not call him “Sir”.
Aguinaldo told him, “When you answer me, you say Sir.”
“Yes Sir,” Fred replied, mimicking an army private.
“I see, you’re sarcastic,” Aguinaldo said.
Fred said, “He grabbed my head with his right hand then punched my ear and temple repeatedly with his left.
“I will make you stupid,” Aguinaldo told him.
“It was good my skull didn’t crack because his arms were sooo big,” Fred said.
And fortunately, too, the torture didn’t last days.
Decades later, Fred happened to talk to Aguinaldo. “I wanted to tell him – you mauled me.”
But he didn’t. Fred said he was afraid that many in the military continue to be “incorrigible.”
Just imagine, there were at least 10,000 human rights victims who suffered torture like Fred did. We don’t know how many fared much worse. How many really died.
The late human rights lawyer Jose Diokno gives us a glimpse of the horror in human terms.
On September 21, 1978 – six years after Ferdinand Marcos imposed Martial Law to allegedly form a New Society – Senator Diokno unmasked what was really going on inside that New Society in a speech before Amnesty International in Cambridge, England.
It was Diokno’s ending that brought home to me the evilness of that perfumed nightmare that to this day Senator Bongbong Marcos, Governor Imee Marcos and Congresswoman Imelda Marcos are trying to deodorize with a show of windmills, elegant clothes and friendly smiles.
Diokno narrated this anecdote at the end of his speech:
I should close, but there is a memory locked in my heart that begs to be shared. It is the memory of a young couple, not yet in their thirties, whom I saw some months ago in a large hall that had been converted into a military courtroom, waiting for the case to be called, in which they stood accused with some 90 other young people.
I had met the young man before martial law. He was a university student – brilliant, articulate, involved. That day in the courtroom he sat in a rattan chair, almost motionless, staring blankly ahead, his mouth half open, totally oblivious to the people and the chatter around him. He had been detained under martial law, punished so repeatedly and so brutally and subjected to such a large dose of what the military call the truth serum, that his mind had cracked. He is confined, to this day, in the mental ward of a military hospital.
Behind him stood his wife, straight and proud, one hand lightly resting on the crown of his head, the other touching his shoulder, tenderly yet defiantly, ready to spring on anyone who might still wish to hurt her husband.
As I looked at the couple, I saw in them the face of every Filipino and I knew then that martial law could crush our bodies, it could break our minds but it could not conquer our spirit. It may silence our voice and seal our eyes but it cannot kill our hope nor obliterate our vision. We will struggle on, no matter how long it takes or what it costs, until we establish a just community of free men and women in our land, deciding together, working and striving together, singing and dancing together, laughing and loving together.
That is the ultimate lesson.
Because of Martial Law, we lost many of the best and the brightest of one entire generation.
Let us not lose more.
_____________________________
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Al Bayani says
We should not forget. We should never forget. It would be a great insult to the memories of those who fought and died for freedom in those dark days, if we allow a Marcos to become vice-president (or a senator again).
Samuel says
Right we must protect the brightest so we shall not lose any more filipinos because of torture
raissa says
Hopefully.
But we have to fight for this.
Gijs says
And yet there are people who look back with nostalgy towards this time. It really is an abomination.
ed celis says
ENRILE THE ARCHETIC OF MARTIAL LAW GOT AWAY CLEAN. SOMETHING FISHY…
KIT says
Colonels Aguinaldo and Bibit and the others have paid dearly for the crimes they have committed against martial law victims, both the person you have interviewed and by myself. Aguinaldo was himself killed and Bibit died of lupus in a military hospital.
I doubt if GOD would accepte them both in heavens, As i prefer that they stay committed in hell, alongwith their master and mistah, Satan.
—-LET’S NOT FORGET THAT THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TWO SIDES OF THE STORY. THE so-called TORTURERS MAY HAVE ALSO BEEN A VICTIM.
Maru says
You are correct Sir. There are two sides of the story. Pero di ko makuhang maawa sa mga torturer. We all have choices.. the torturer could have chosen not to do it but they did. So kung namatay man sila violently or naghirap sila dahil sa sakit MABUTI nga sa kanila ! kasi kulang pa ang ganung kaparusahan sa makahayop nilang gawain ! Me just sayin sir
Roger espinosa says
Ako po ay isa sa mga saksi kung papano nagaganap ang darkest and horror period in our country. Ang mga police at militar ay mga kampon ng kadiliman ng mga Marcos. Ibinabalik ni bbm sng galit ng mga taong ksnilang sinaktan noong martial law noong sinabi nyang NATUTUWA AKO NA AKO”Y ISANG MSRCOS”. Sana naman dina sila makabslik pa sa Malacañan.
raissa says
It’s up to all of us to prevent that from happening.
Rallie F. Cruz says
I happened to witness when the show of Apo Hiking Society “Eto na Puh sila” was being tried hardly by Imee Marcos to stop the show. I also happened to hear a lot about Imelda ordering to cut the lives and limbs of those trapped at the Film festival building collapsed at Manila Bay shore so it can be finished on time.
It is still fresh in my memory about how Bongbong having injured a fellow student in school outside the country for allegedly hearing words against his father. True or not, it only makes me wonder what one can do to himself or the others once he holds even just a privilege of being related to someone who really has the power. What more if that kind of power will directly fall into their hands?
If one small fry among the police officers living in a community of slam could act as God father to car thieves in Araneta Ave. Quezon City, what more of those who have the power over the members of the military and police organization can do against the people they are sworn to protect?
alhaj akbar says
Colonels Aguinaldo and Bibit and the others have paid dearly for the crimes they have committed against martial law victims, both the person you have interviewed and by myself. Aguinaldo was himself killed and Bibit died of lupus in a military hospital.
I doubt if GOD would accepte them both in heavens, As i prefer that they stay committed in hell, alongwith their master and mistah, Satan.
Up to this day, the military through ISAFP and the PNP through Intelligence Group, continue to harass me and my family.
What the heck?
Vengeance is mine says the LORD.
the LORD will deal with these reactionaries, in the peak of time.
duquemarino says
Karma
Evangeline Eriksson says
No to more governmental position next time for Imelda, Imee & Ferdinand R Marcos.
JOHN MICHAEL CASTEN says
SORRY TO TELL YOU BUT WE’RE BACK IN BUSINESS OF REAL SERVICE FOR THE PEOPLE HINDI KATULAD NGAYO PANAY ALAM LANG MAGPAHIRAP NG MAMAMAYAN
MABUHAY KA APO LAKAY IBABALIK NAMIN ANG NINAKAW NILANG DANGAL